Battery and Withholding Allowance Clarification

[FRC234]

Please confirm that spare batteries, modified from their original form by the addition of connectors (either the ones in the KOP or COTS connectors purchased by a team or customer fabricated ones) are excluded from the WITHHOLDING ALLOWANCE and do not need to be dis-assembled before being brought into a competition site.

[FRC1114]

In response to some of the recent Q&A entries on the withholding allowance, we have the following four questions. I apologize in advance for the pedantic and verbose nature of the questions, but in light of the confusions of many we felt it was necessary to be very specific.

1. In the response to FRC177's question (http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=12033), the response said that "COTS items that have been assembled, attached, connected, or wired to each other in any way form a MECHANISM, and are considered FABRICATED ITEMS." In response to FRC178 (http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=12029), the GDC said that "Additional batteries do not need to be considered part of the WITHHOLDING ALLOWANCE." Consider an MK ES17-12 battery (with mounting hardware), an Anderson SB50 connector housing, two crimp contacts, two 6 AWG leads, two ring terminals (with crimp or screw connections), and electrical tape, connected in the usual way for an FRC robot.

a. Does this configuration represent a fabricated item?
b. If a team hand-carries it to an event, will it be factored into the withholding allowance?

2. In responding to FRC177 (http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=12033) and FRC2743 (http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=11913), the GDC said that "COTS items that have been altered from their "out of the box" condition...are, by definition, FABRICATED ITEMS" and that if "the item has been modified, altered, used, or abused, then it no longer satisfies the definition" of COTS. Lead-acid batteries are specified by their manufacturers with a finite number of charge-discharge cycles. By charging and/or using a COTS battery (and therefore diminishing its life from its out-of-the-box condition), does it become a fabricated item?

(Looking at the presented litmus test, "if you were purchasing the item with your own money, and it was presented by the vendor as "brand new," would you accept it and pay for it as a "new" item or identify it as a "used" item (and ask for a discount)?" it seems that a used battery would not be considered COTS and thereby considered a fabricated item.)


3. In the response to FRC2743 (http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=11854), the GDC implies that a fabricated item can be disassembled into COTS items in order to avoid counting the fabricated item toward the withholding allowance. Therefore, given a battery assembly constructed during the 2009 build season, may we detach the ES17-12 from the battery connection assembly (tape, ring terminals, wires, crimp contacts & housing) in order to prevent the ES17-12 from being counted toward the withholding allowance? (For clarity, please reconfirm if it makes a difference whether the ES17-12 was charged and/or discharged, or if the entire battery-and-connector assembly was assembled prior to the 2009 season.)

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Cheers,

[GDC]

1: Spare batteries, in their unmodified form (i.e. WITHOUT connectors or battery leads installed) would be considered COTS items. COTS items may be brought to the competition events in unlimited quantities, under Rule <R35>. Batteries that have leads and connectors attached would be MECHANISMS and FABRICATED ITEMS, and would fall under the corresponding constraints. Therefore:
a : yes, this is a FABRICATED ITEM
b : if it is hand-carried to an event, then it must be factored into the WITHHOLDING ALLOWANCE

2: For the purposes of the FIRST Robotics Competition, just cycling a battery through charge/discharge cycles will not be considered a modification of the battery. Therefore, it may still be considered a COTS item (assuming it has not been assembled into a MECHANISM as described above).

3: For the purposes of the FIRST Robotics Competition, if the battery has been assembled into a MECHANISM for use during the build season that is later disassembled into the original COMPONENTS, then the battery may still be considered a COTS item.